Bill Remembers the 1940s by Bill Cass

On a whim recently I stuck "Camp Pathfinder" in a Google search and found the web site.

It was very satisfying to see that Pathfinder is still there.......  !!

I was a camper, Chippewa if I remember correctly, way back in 1940 and 1941and remember Chief Norton, and "Tick" very well...  I was from Buffalo back then, now live in Maine.. and also remember taking the train to camp as it stopped in Buffalo and had the Rochester campers already aboard.  We all had blue shirts with Pathfinder in red above the pockets back then.... got the clothes at Sibley, Lindsay and Curr in Rochester..

Learned to swim at Pathfinder.... my grandfather had told me he would get me a sailboat as soon as I did... great incentive.. but probably the reason I was at Pathfinder for only two summers.  The boat ended up being a 10' Peterborough sailing dinghy exactly like one of the two at Pathfinder in those days. I had that boat on Lake Erie until 1953 when I graduated from Hobart College and headed for the US Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  Sold it to a friend....

I was a dedicated fisherman even way back then, and had brought my lake trout wire line deep trolling rig to camp with me... caught quite a few  lakers in Source Lake while there.  I remember that the camp cook was only too glad to serve them, too, along with batches of frogs legs we managed to catch on the old floating brush pile.

The one trip I most remember included Opeongo, Burnt Island, and I seem to remember a lake off the western upper end of Opeongo that might have been called Green? At any rate, the color of the water was close to that and perfectly clear.  Didn't know what fish there might be in it but quickly found lots of smallmouth bass.  Had a good supper that night...

Enjoyed reading through the reports, comments etc. and glad you are still going strong.  I had lots of outdoor exposure and experience before getting to Pathfinder as a result of spending time from four years of age on up at my grandfathers camp on Pythonga Lake in Quebec (that's why I knew how to catch lake trout) but learned a great deal there, and look back on that time with fondness.

I went on to the world of work, and ended up the Orvis Company in Manchester, VT for about 12 years which was great for a fly fisherman, and ended up going back to school at age 60 and getting a Masters in Counseling at the University of New Hampshire, where I worked as a career counselor until 2002 when I retired.

I'm doing a bit of woodworking these days, and of course fishing, and at going on 74 years and in pretty good health expect at least a few more good years. I keep a web site going that you might enjoy looking at, its at: http://home.comcast.net/~grizzly01/index.html

 Anyway, enough of an old man's ramblings, just wanted to let you know how glad I was to find that Pathfinder's still there and looking good.....

That old brush pile was something....  If it is long gone or no one else remembers it, it was along the south shore of the island and consisted of three at least, maybe four huge logs hooked together at their ends to make a floating frame.  If memory serves me well, boards had been laid on top of the logs to serve as a walkway. Into this was dumped all the cuttings and clearings of brush  and wood, to allow them to deteriorate and sink to the bottom. The frame logs were plenty big enough for 9 and 10 year old boys to step on and still stay afloat.  The bullfrog population was huge, both in numbers and in size of each frog. While the food in the mess hall was excellent, there were a couple of us who had tasted frogs legs in the past, which is what prompted the foraging on the brush pile once the frogs were discovered.  I am sure that this was not officially viewed as a desirable or encouraged use of camper's spare time, but we sure learned how to catch bullfrogs.

Hard to believe that was 63 years ago or thereabouts...

Bill Cass